


Quarantine, Brownies, and Belonging

by avid_author_activist



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I WROTE 17K IN FOUR DAYS FOR THIS, M/M, Minor Character Death, Quarantine, Slow Romance, i wrote 21k in eleven days for this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_author_activist/pseuds/avid_author_activist
Summary: Will Treaty doesn’t have friends. He hates talking to people, content to keep his head down and stay in the background. But that means when COVID-19 strikes and his university closes its dorms, he doesn’t have anywhere to go.When a teammate offers to let Will use his spare room, Will should be ecstatic. Except for one thing: they hate each other’s guts. And now, they’re stuck together in the same tiny apartment for two months.If COVID doesn’t get them first, they might just end up killing one another.
Relationships: Cassandra | Evanlyn/Alyss Mainwaring, Halt O'Carrick & Will Treaty, Horace Altman/Will Treaty, Will Treaty & Alyss Mainwaring
Comments: 146
Kudos: 88
Collections: Ranger's Apprentice Quarantine Exchange Party





	1. a lifeboat adrift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hessy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hessy/gifts).



> To the amazing Hessy!! This kind of got away from me, a little bit, and I think we're looking at like 20 chapters? I'll try to update it weekly, and I hope you like it!!

Will’s phone lights up.

He looks down at the notification, and dread bleeds through his gut, an awful mixture of fear and shock and anxiety.

_Campus will be CLOSED for two weeks due to increase in COVID-19 cases in Franklin County. Please remain safe and do NOT return to your dorms on Monday. Classes will be held online until we re-evaluate the situation. Professors will email updates shortly. We ask for your patience during this unprecedented time._

He resists the urge to bury his head in his hands. This is not good. This is so fucking not good that no word in the English language could possibly describe how _not good_ it is. 

Everyone else has the opposite response. “Yo, that’s fuckin’ dope!” someone shouts over the blaring music. Or slurs, more accurately. “Check your phone, bruh. No more class!”

“Dude, I’ll be staying out all night, then!” 

Of course the shitheads on the track team will take this as an excuse to party more. Will, on the other hand, tries not to think about how hard his coding project is going to be without any face-to-face contact.

And how after dorms shut down, he won’t have anywhere to stay.

Because right now, he _can’t_ go home.

The guys in the kitchen erupt into whoops and hollers, and Will can tell that all of them are drunk. He scrunches himself tighter on the couch and wonders why he’s here in the first place, pushing down the loneliness that rises in him like a waxing tide. 

The team throws a party— _team bonding_ is the official term—after every track meet, social distancing be damned. Will would rather be anywhere else in the world but here, but no one is willing to give him a ride back to his dorm on the other end of campus. Next time—if there _is_ a next time, and the entire track season isn’t cancelled—he’s going to walk the three miles in the dark. The rap music and the smell of weed are giving him a headache.

Someone yells something above the rap music. Will looks up to see Horace Altman vault onto a chair, the can of beer in his hand sloshing onto the floor. “Everyone shut up!” he shouts. “Someone fuckin’ reported us!” 

The room falls silent. In the distance, Will hears the sound of sirens.

What the fuck? He thought police breaking up parties was just a thing that happened in movies.

There’s another beat of silence, and then as one, everyone scrambles for the door and their cars waiting by the curb. Will waits until the stampede is over and slips outside, pulling his hoodie up over his hair and hunching against the freezing wind. The last car peels away from the house. A bolt of panic sends Will’s heart into triple time, but deep down, he isn’t surprised at being forgotten. He’s become used to it _._

In the distance, the sirens are getting closer. Shivering, he hops the chainlink fence into the next yard and slips into the shadows to wait it out. He thinks bitterly that this is a great metaphor for the rest of his life. Crouching in the shadows, waiting everything out. 

A police car pulls up to the curb. An officer gets out, glancing at the wide-open door and the deserted house, the red Solo cups scattered over the scrubby lawn and the speakers still blaring rap music. He switches on a flashlight and does a quick sweep of the yard behind the bushes, shakes his head, and leaves.

Will slips out of the shadows, opening Google Maps with frozen fingers, and starts the trek back to his dorm.

Sleet stings his face as he walks by the light of scant yellow streetlamps. Will’s feet are numb and his hoodie is doing fuck-all against the weather. He’s bracing himself to endure another mile and a half when a honk splits the night.

He spins around. “What the hell?”

A beat-up Honda pulls up to the sidewalk. Will backs away from it, wondering who the fuck is driving around in this neighborhood at 2am. 

Then driver rolls down the window, and something close to hatred spikes in Will's chest as he realizes the driver is none other than Horace Altman. _Fuck._ “What do you want?” he snaps. 

“I was gonna ask you the same thing. Where the hell are you going?” Horace looks Will up and down. There’s a restrained animosity written in every line of him, from the tight jaw to the slightly narrowed eyes. 

Will continues walking. “What’s it to you?”

“I don’t leave people wandering outside at 2am,” he says coldly. “Even–”

He cuts off, but the unspoken end of the phrase hangs between them. _Even if it’s you_. Will bites back an angry response and keeps walking. A fight with Horace is the last thing he needs right now. 

“Seriously, where the fuck are you going?” Horace presses, like he actually cares. “You live on-campus, don’t you? That’s, what, another two miles away?”

“It’s creepy you know where I live.”

“Just let me give you a lift, goddamn.” His voice rises in volume. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“Why do you care?” The words come out harsher than Will intends. 

“I don’t leave people wandering outside at 2am,” he repeats.

“I–”

“Get in the damn car.”

Reluctantly, Will climbs into the backseat, wondering if he’s about to get kidnapped or killed. Getting into a car alone after midnight with someone he doesn’t really know is the exact opposite of Detective JJ Bittenbinder’s street smarts. He hopes to god his name and picture aren’t in the local news tomorrow. 

“What’s your dorm?” Horace turns around, wearing a long-suffering expression. Will gives him the address, trying to restrain his own animosity. Horace is the one driving him, after all.

Too late, he suddenly remembers that Horace was drinking at the party. “Shit, are you drunk?” he asks.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “I had, like, one beer. Chill.”

“Oh.”

The awkwardness is so thick he could cut it with a pair of safety scissors. Will keeps his eyes glued to his phone and counts down the seconds in his head. They tick by at a glacial pace.

After what feels like several eternities, Horace asks, “Is this good?”, and he breathes out a silent sigh of relief.

“Yeah, perfect. Thank you.” Will moves to get out of the car when Horace turns around, lips parted like he’s on the brink of asking a question.

“I was wondering something,” he says slowly.

“What is it?” Will shuts the car door and pulls his hood over his head again. 

“Well... I was wondering if you had a place to go after dorms close. You live out of state, don’t you?” There’s a bit of real concern on his face, and Will wonders if he actually has a shred of human decency after all.

And then he remembers the months of taunts and cold shoulders and decides that even if there _is_ a shred, even if he _does_ care, Horace is still one of the worst people he’s ever met. 

So Will opens his mouth to answer that of course _, of course_ he has a place to go. “I…” 

Something makes him stop short, the lie sitting heavy on his tongue. 

The hesitation is enough. Horace swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the dim light. “You can crash at my place,” he offers slowly, as if this is something that pains him to say. Which it probably is. “Until you find somewhere better.”

If it were anyone else at all, Will would jump at the chance. But he would rather go to a hundred frat parties than stay with Horace Altman. He’d sooner dip a papercut in lime juice or attend a soap opera with the President. 

“I—I'll think about it. Thanks,” he says, and his tongue is thick in his mouth. 

"Think about it now."

Will wants to refuse with everything in him, but he might not have a choice. There are seven cases of corona on campus right now. Seven cases he might have been exposed to already. 

If he goes home, he risks infecting his little sister. His chest contracts at the thought, something in his ribcage snapping tight. Because if his little sister is infected, she will die, and then Will will never, ever, forgive himself.

"Yes," he says, so quietly it's almost lost in the night. "If it isn't a problem." 

Horace nods once. “I’ll pick you up Sunday afternoon.”

He rolls the window up and peels away from the curb. Will watches his tail lights recede in the distance. 

And hopes against hope he isn’t making the biggest mistake of his life.

<>-<>-<>

Will doesn’t know what he expected Horace’s apartment to be. Someplace filled with magazines of bikini models, maybe. With dirty underwear strewn on the floor and a pentagram chalked in a corner of the kitchenette.

Instead, he gets a second-story apartment across from Whole Foods, all quaint brick walls and black tiled roof. The welcome mat under his feet is faded and the door creaks when Horace unlocks it. 

Late-afternoon light streams into the living room, which has an actual coffee table, and the kitchen looks passably clean. Everything smells faintly of espresso and something that reminds Will of his mom’s sandalwood perfume.

“Ground rules,” Horace says shortly, watching Will struggle with his bags. “Don’t use all the hot water. Stock the fridge with your own food. No drugs, no pets, no alcohol, no smoking–”

“Didn’t think you were that kind of person,” Will says, unable to stop himself.

“It was in the conditions, fuckhead,” Horace retorts, still watching him juggle a pile of textbooks, a pillow, and a desk lamp. Will’s arms are starting to cramp, but he’s too proud to ask for help. 

He follows Horace down a short hallway branching off the living room. “Anyway, this is the spare room,” he says, opening the first door. There’s a twin bed, no sheets, and a stack of cardboard boxes piled in the corner. “No one’s used it before, so you get to be the first one.”

“Lucky me,” Will manages, setting his textbooks down with a _thump_. He officially owns a set of the world’s most expensive deadweights.

“Lucky you,” Horace repeats. 

He stands there in the doorway for a second, his expression hard as rock. Will’s hands clench automatically around his lamp, knuckles white against his brown skin. No matter how long he lives here, no matter how long he has to put up with Horace, he’s never going to forget what happened between them freshman year. 

“Just stay out of my way,” he says finally.

The door closes behind him with a _click_ , leaving Will alone, the desk lamp still clutched in his hands. 

For a second on Monday morning, Will forgets where he is. The bed is unfamiliar, the walls blank, the ceiling an alien color.

Then the events of the weekend come crashing over his head. Campus has officially shut down. Classes are online. He’s living in Horace Altman’s apartment. 

2020 has been one hell of a year, and it’s only March. 

He groans and buries his face in his pillow. How did he get himself into this? What was he _thinking?_ Will rolls over again and stares at the ceiling. He has to find another place to stay as soon as humanly possible. 

There’s only one other option in this entire goddamned city: Alyss Mainwaring, the only contact in his phone under the age of 40. They've known each other since middle school. 

She picks up on the first ring. “What did you do?” she asks immediately. 

“Who says I’ve done anything?”

“If you need to call a lawyer–”

“Jesus Christ, I’m fine,” Will says, sitting up. “Except for, you know, the global pandemic and probable quarantine.”

“I relate.” The speaker crackles as Alyss sighs. “So, what _is_ the purpose of this lovely 8am phone call? Is there a problem with our coding project?” 

“The project is fine. I wanted to ask if you had a place I could stay.”

A beat of silence. Then: “Will, do your parents know that you aren’t coming home? Does Halt?”

Damn Alyss for being this perceptive.

“No-o,” Will says. “They don’t. As far as they’re concerned, campus is still open and I’m ensconced safely and soundly in my dormitory. If they knew, they’d drag me home before I could say _corona_ , and, well.” He coughs. “You know I can’t go back.”

“Oh my god,” she mutters. “You’re hopeless.”

“Thank you dearly. So can I stay over?”

Alyss hesitates. “I’m living with Cass until campus re-opens,” she says. “We only has one bedroom, but I could ask around–”

“No,” Will says quickly. The idea of staying with a random person in a random apartment is physically repugnant to him. At least he’s known Horace for years, even if they hate each other. “No, no. It’s fine. I have a place.”

“Who are you staying with?”

“Uh… Horace?” 

Alyss practically screeches, and Will almost drops his phone. “Horace _Altman?_ You’re staying with _that_ Horace?”

“Only temporarily,” he says. “Until the two-week closure is over. I’ll be okay.” 

He’s trying to convince himself as much as her. He isn’t sure if it’s working.

“Dear Lord,” Alyss says, drawing out the words. “If you need me to kill him for you, let me know.”

“I might kill him first, just so you know. You can call the lawyer.”

“Dear Lord,” she repeats, and he can practically see her rubbing her forehead. There’s a sudden crackle from the other end, and Alyss swears under her breath. “Shoot, the time. Okay, I have a Zoom meeting in five minutes, so I've gotta go. I love you, idiot.”

“Love you too.” Will puts his phone down and flops back onto his bed.

If Alyss is living with her girlfriend, that means Horace is his only choice. He's going to be stuck here until campus re-opens, and that might not be anytime soon. 

The enormity of his situation suddenly strikes him. There’s no one else he can turn to. Nowhere else he can go, in the literal whole wide world. 

How is it that he is _alone_ , a thousand miles away from his hometown and family, living with someone he literally hates? Will feels like a lifeboat cut loose, facing the open sea alone. Drifting always. Belonging never.

A faint _ding_ cuts his pity-party short. On the floor, his phone lights up with another notification. He picks it up, wondering who the hell is contacting him at 8am on Monday morning. 

For the second time, a sickening dread pools in the bottom of his stomach.

_Governor DeWine of Ohio announces “Shelter-in-Place” order. All Ohio residents are to leave home for essential activities ONLY until April 28, 2020, when this policy will be evaluated and revised as needed. All public universities and schools will be closed until further notice._

Shelter in place.

In _place._

This has to be a bad dream.

In what sort of hellish dimension does Will deserve to be stuck at Horace’s apartment for the next _month and a half_? 

“Fuck,” he groans, followed by a string of curse words that his Muslim mom would kill him for. It comes out louder than it’s supposed to, and Will hears the door across the hall open. About ten seconds later, Horace sticks his head out the door, eyes still dull with sleep. 

“Would it kill you to shut the hell up, Treaty?” he demands.

Will is still too shell-shocked to bite back, even though a familiar flash of anger ignites deep inside him. Instead, he holds up the phone and shows Horace the notification.

“Fuck,” Horace repeats, and his head falls against the doorframe with an audible _thud._


	2. nazira

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big huge thanks to @elizathehumancarrot for being the best beta ever and also putting up with my impulsive posting bullshit. u deserve the world and i wish i could give it to u<3

There is little anxiety in this world, Will thinks, that is greater than the ten or so seconds he spends in the Zoom waiting room before a meeting he’d rather not attend. But he’s running track on a scholarship, so he’s basically contractually obligated to attend the team Zooms.

“Good to see you, Treaty,” Coach Rodney says. Will mutters a quick “Hey”, is relieved his voice doesn’t crack, and hits the mute button.

A moment later, Horace enters the meeting to a chorus of “H-dawg!” and “yo, Horace, wassup?” 

He grins with that easy way of his that makes Will want to hit something. “It’s been a hot sec, y’all.” There’s a split-second delay between Horace’s voice coming from his room next door and Horace’s voice echoing from his laptop, noticeable enough that it’s giving Will a headache. Fucking great: two Horace Altmans.

“Alright, talk to me about the training plans,” Rodney’s saying. “Are they formatted alright?” 

Will only nods, not wanting to say that the mileage table leaves out half the freshmen and cuts off Sunday completely. He’ll just shoot off an email later. 

“Some of the terminology in the throwing workouts could be weird to the freshmen,” Horace, who clearly does not have Will's crippling levels of social anxiety, says. “And new guys really shouldn’t do some of the harder lifts without spotters.”

Someone chimes in with an anecdote about the weight room freshman year. Will tunes it out, bites back the emotions that rise in his throat like bile. He tells himself it isn’t jealousy, that Horace plays better in the limelight and Will just... doesn’t.

But he doesn’t miss the appraising look Rodney gives his rising discus star. If he makes Horace a team captain next year, Will might just throw something. Rodney can’t make Horace a captain. Not after what happened freshman year.

“Treaty! Treaty, are you listening to me?” his coach is asking, clearly exasperated, and someone snickers in the background.

Will jumps in his seat and unmutes himself. “Uh–”

“I was asking,” Rodney says, exasperation written across his face, “if you, as someone who likes to run solo, had any advice for your teammates on how to train alone during quarantine.”

He might as well have pointed a neon sign at Will that said NO SOCIAL LIFE. “Uh,” Will says again, wishing he could just leave. “I guess you’re going to have to be prepared for workouts to be more mentally challenging than they have been. But there are ways you can motivate yourself to do them.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Rodney says. “Any specifics?”

Damn. If Will had known he’d be put on the spot like this, he would’ve come prepared with a bulleted list. He swallows, suddenly unable to articulate the simple things he loves about distance running, the steadiness of it, the adrenaline of chasing faster times and longer distances. 

“Uh,” he says for the third fucking time, wracking his brains for the mental strength lectures Halt gave in high school. “One thing that’s different is that you won’t have teammates to cheer you on. So... you’re going to have to push yourself harder, I guess.”

“I think what Will is trying to say is that we have to remember what we train for and represent,” Horace cuts in smoothly, and Will feels both relief and resentment bubble up in his stomach. “ _Why_ we throw. _Why_ we run—or why y’all run; I wouldn’t run distance if you paid me.”

“Damn right,” says one of the pole vaulters, earning a glare from Rodney.

Horace grins and keeps talking. “I don’t know what your personal motivations are, but I feel like all of us are on this team for a reason—we love track and field, and just because official practices are over doesn’t mean that goes away.”

Will thinks about all the times Horace showed up late to practice this season and rolls his eyes. Also, it’s unfair how he can just... _verbalize_ what Will was struggling to say, goddammit.

“Air five,” someone says, and Horace grins.

“Very nicely put.” Rodney clears his throat. “Now...”

Will’s phone buzzes, and he looks down, distracted. It’s a call from his dad.

He mutes himself and picks up. “Hey, what happened?” His parents know how much he hates phone calls, so they usually text him. Unless something is wrong.

“Hey, kiddo.” His dad’s voice sounds strained. “Are you in class right now?”

“I—no. I’ve got fifteen minutes before I have to go to chem,” Will says, lying through his teeth. “What’s up?”

A deep breath that sets his nerves on edge. Then: “Nazira’s in the hospital. They’re suggesting another round of chemo.”

“ _What_? Is that safe, with… well, everything? Fu—frick, is she okay?”

“There are still no reported cases anywhere near us,” he says. “And Nazira ran a high fever last night, but she’s alright now. She’ll be okay, Will—I just wanted to let you know.”

“But you’ll tell me if she gets worse?”

“Of course,” his dad says. “Either me or Mom, who says hello, by the way.”

“Tell her hi back. And Nazira too. But I—I gotta go,” Will says, his head spinning. He doesn’t want to break down on the phone with his dad, and he definitely doesn’t want to break down in front of the entire team. “Bye, love you.”

“Love you, kiddo.” He hears, rather than sees, his dad’s smile, and then the call disconnects.

The soles of his shoes crunch against asphalt. Will’s breath is coming hard, and the cold air stings his face and lungs. A gust of wind scythes through his zip-up, and he yanks the collar up to no avail. His foot throbs from when he kicked the bed in frustration after ditching the Zoom call. Rodney’s going to give him shit for that later, but he doesn’t care. 

Because right now, Will has the headspace to care about one thing, and one thing only: _Nazira’s in the hospital. Nazira’s in the hospital._ The thought pounds a tattoo in his head, in time with his feet on the pavement. Logically, Will knows that his sister will probably be okay. She spends another few nights in the hospital, has another round of chemo, everything goes back to normal. Or, as close to normal as life can get during a global pandemic.

But there’s a nagging creature in the back of his brain that tells him there’s a chance—and the chance is far higher than he’d like—that perhaps things won’t go back to normal. That his family will lose Nazira, and that the loss will rip them apart. 

He’s been living with this terror since he was fifteen.

Will speeds up, as if he can overwhelm the mental pain with physical exhaustion. As if he can literally run away from his problems. They jostle the front of his mind, eager to be let out. He lets them go, burning stress, fear, and anxiety like helium in a dying star. 

Someone honks at him as his foot catches on something and he stumbles in the road.“Sorry!” he shouts, and keeps running, his thoughts still tumbling around him in an avalanche.

 _Quarantine_. The entire state is officially under stay at home orders now. Classes are going to be online until who the fuck knows when. Maybe he just saw some of his teammates and classmates and professors for the very last time on Friday. He’ll never know.

 _Summit_. Their coding project. He, Alyss, and Professor Meratyn were supposed to launch an app this year. It was going to change a lot of things, raise funds for LeukemiaLives, a cancer charity. But because of this stupid virus, things are different now. God, what if they lose sponsors? What if the entire project gets called off?

Will takes these uncertainties and pounds them into oblivion, loses them in every breath, every stride, every mile. 

His watch beeps, letting him know it’s been twenty minutes. He turns around and heads back for Horace’s apartment.

And then he swears aloud. Thinking about Horace—and the rest of the team—shreds the tenuous peace in his mind. 

No matter how much he tries, no matter how fast he is or how many races he wins, Will just can’t fit in on the team. He doesn’t belong there any more than a fish belongs on land. And Horace just serves to emphasize that more than anything. 

It’s March 16th. A year ago, nearly to the day, was the incident—the one that started everything. The memory plays back through his brain, and an anger Will didn’t even know he had rises in him so fast that his chest burns. He picks up the pace, taking some savage pleasure in the way his quads are burning and his breathing is ragged. By the time he reaches the apartment, the pace on his watch reads _5:30/mile_ and Will skids to a stop, gasping for air.

He clasps his hands behind his head and looks up at Horace’s second-floor apartment, feeling his pulse come back down. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he can still feel that sense of frustration, fermenting like the world’s worst emotional brew. This usually works—why isn’t it working now?

And then he tries the door, and of course, it’s locked. Will sighs, swallowing down the tiny scrap of pride he has left, and rings the doorbell to wait for Horace to let him in.

This day just keeps getting better and better. 

<>-<>-<>

It’s the end of the first week, and Will is about to lose his mind. He’s been an introvert his entire life, but quarantine is still difficult. Maybe he’s underestimated how much talking to Alyss in person helps, how much high-fives and awful jokes from Crowley lift his mood. 

And it certainly doesn’t help that he keeps to his room and only comes out for food and to use the restroom. He can hear Horace FaceTiming his friends almost every second of the day, and the sound makes it hard to concentrate on anything, but it’s fine. 

As long as they avoid killing one another, Will tells himself, it’s fine. 

The only thing that helps is going out for his morning runs. Running is a constant in his life. It’s the only way he can retain some sense of normalcy, the only way he can feel like the entire world hasn’t gone to shit. 

But it’s also the reason why Sunday morning, Will is heaving himself up the stairs at 8am, his calves screaming in protest and his feet leaden in his sneakers. He fumbles for the spare key and lets himself into the apartment, groaning as the warm air falls around him like a blanket.

Critical velocity workouts are the absolute _worst_. He still can’t feel his fingers, arms, or toes. Or anything, really, but the pain tearing through his legs and his breath scraping against his throat like a knife.

The thought of a hot shower sends a literal jolt of anticipation through him all the way down to the tips of his toes.

Except Will realizes, rooting through the hall closet, there aren’t any fucking towels. Not even the ones he brought from his dorm on Friday. He can’t think of where they might have gotten to, but everything has been a mess lately, and he’s just too tired to look for them.

An ungodly shiver wracks his entire body, and it’s agonizing knowing that he could just step into the bathroom for twenty minutes of _bliss_ , but if he doesn’t have a towel he’ll just suffer doubly afterwards.

Will sighs, looking towards Horace’s closed door. The very last thing he wants to do is ask for one, but he also _really_ has to take a shower. He steels himself and knocks.

“What?” Horace asks, not even bothering to open it.

“You got any extra towels?” 

At this, he opens the door, looking down at Will irritably. Will hates how Horace makes him feel even shorter than he already is. “Didn’t you bring any?” 

“I mean, yeah, but–” He stops short as he sees one of _his_ towels on Horace’s bed, noticeably very used and very sweaty-looking. “Dude, what the fuck?”

“What?” Horace’s tone changes from vaguely irritated to ticked off. 

“What did you have to use one of my towels for?”

“Oh, that. Damn, calm down—I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you’d get so pissed.” 

Will is unable to articulate to Horace the basic fucking concept that you shouldn’t use someone else’s towel, especially if they’re a guest at your place. And he is really cold, and really tired, and _for the love of all things holy, he just wants a towel so he can shower_. “I—didn’t you ever get taught basic manners as a kid?”

Horace’s voice gets louder to match his. “It was in the closet, so I used it. Don’t mix them together if you don’t want me to grab one!” 

His dark eyes have this driven intensity to them, and Will realizes that he’s managed to actually piss Horace off. The thought brings him some kind of savage satisfaction. 

Still, he makes an immense effort to bring himself under control again, for the sake of civility and also getting a potential towel. “I—fine—okay. Do you have any spare towels, then?” he asks, trying to keep his voice level. 

Horace snorts, still angry. “No, I don’t have a spare towel. That’s why I used yours, dumbass. Go use a shirt or something.” 

He closes the door in Will’s face, and Will can only stare at it, fuming. 


	3. Chapter 3

For the next five days, they seem to come up with an unspoken agreement to avoid one another as much as possible. It’s easy enough—Horace keeps leaving in the afternoon and getting back at midnight, probably to hang out with his friends. Even though they're the middle of a global pandemic. Because that’s the kind of fucking person he is. 

On his end, Will barricades himself in his room and tries to stay six feet away at all times. He’s been busy working on an app prototype with Alyss and Crowley, his programming languages professor. Crowley was the one who originally came up with Summit—Will only signed on last August when he heard Crowley was looking for a partner charity. They struck a deal with LeukemiaLives two weeks later.

“You’ll never guess who emailed me this morning,” Crowley says, taking a sip from the thirty-two ounce thermos on his desk. “At 6:34 am, no less. Very surprised that it did not get lost in the apocalypse that is my inbox.”

“Was it Lives? What did they say?” Alyss asks. “I–”

The rest of her sentence is drowned out by a round of loud, uproarious laughter that comes straight through the thin walls—Horace must be FaceTiming his friend group again. Will swears under his breath, plugging in his earbuds and turning up the volume on his laptop.

“It wasn’t good news,” Crowley’s saying. He hesitates, and the anxiety in the pit of Will’s stomach swells like a tide. “Okay, no point in sugarcoating this,” he says finally. “They recently donated a hundred grand to a research hospital in the Midwest to fund research. Unfortunately–”

“–the research has been terminated, like everything else?” Will asks dryly. At this point, he’s lost track of all the apologetic cancellation emails in his inbox. Track season, three of their fundraising events, and a seminar he was looking forward to—gone. Concerts and a summer internship he was applying for—gone. Yeah, it’s all for a good and scientifically sound reason, but he’s still upset over it.

“Not precisely, but in practice, yes.” Crowley says, pulling his ginger hair into a knot. “In any case, they can’t recoup the cost, and they’re going to sink. Unless this app can pull through.”

“You’re saying we’re their last hope.” Alyss leans back in her chair.

“Yep.”

Will can practically feel his heart jump into triple-time. LeukemiaLives, and therefore Summit, is something that’s fucking personal to him. It’s the only way he can make up for high school. The only way he can feel like he’s helping instead of sitting around and twiddling his thumbs. While there is breath in his body, he will not let Lives fail. 

Alyss glances at him, brows creased in worry, but Will forces his shoulders to relax and shoots her a thumbs-up. If there’s a way forward, any chance for success at all, he isn’t going to sit around worrying. “So, what’s the plan now?”

“Lives needs twenty-five grand by June 3. Otherwise they’re screwed,” says Crowley. “So I’m thinking somehow we do a walk/run event before the app launch to raise preliminary funds to send to them. Fifty cents per mile, just like using the app. Then we can launch later in June like we planned.”

“Wait, wait,” Alyss says. “We have a working prototype nearly finished, and most of the bugs are already gone. Why can’t we just launch earlier and wait for funds to come in that way?”

“Too risky.” He shakes his head, and a couple strands of hair fly loose from the topknot. “I’d rather fundraise first instead of having to focus on the launch. We can always push the launch back, but not the fundraising. And God knows how we’re even going to do the fundraising with COVID running rampant.”

“Me and Alyss can put together a list,” Will interjects.

“And shoot emails to our sponsors,” says Alyss. “I’m not majoring in International Relations for nothing.”

“This is hardly the same thing,” Crowley notes, but he’s grinning. “Knew I could count on you guys to help out.” 

“Well, I have no choice.” Will shakes his head. Back in August, he let Crowley make Summit his final project for Programming Languages 400. It’s worth half his grade, so he needs to do well on it to pass the class, and he has to pass the class to keep his track scholarship. In short: if Summit fails, he fails his first class ever, loses a scholarship, bankrupts a charity, and lets his family down in the worst way possible. 

Just thinking about everything he’s going to endure over the next three months makes him stressed. 

Crowley shrugs. “You could choose to fail. Obviously, I know you wouldn’t,” he adds hastily. “But I’m just  _ saying _ .”

“Thank you for that,” Will grumbles.

“Guys, I still think we should launch first,” Alyss cuts in. “It’s just odd if we donate to them before Summit even hits the App Store.”

Crowley frowns. “Odd, but at least not risky.”

“Every move we make carries risk. You think our sponsors are going to be happy if we donate twenty-five thousand dollars before they get anything out of the app?”

Will feels a sudden burst of pride for Alyss. In ten years, she could be an ambassador to a foreign country talking about global affairs. He already pities the person that will sit across from her at the negotiating table.

“But they–” Crowley is saying, and then from the next room, Will hears a “FUCK, man!”. It’s loud enough that even his earbuds can’t drown it out.

“Oh my god,” he says aloud, yanking them out and getting up. “I’m so sorry—I’ll be right back.” 

He steels himself and opens the door to Horace’s room. A sense of déja-vu rocks him as he remembers the towel incident last week. Hopefully, this interaction won’t be quite that awful. 

Horace is sprawled on his bed, long legs stretched out, one arm thrown under his head, the light from his phone reflecting off his dark skin. He has FaceTime open, and Will recognizes half a dozen upperclassmen from track, all of whom have been assholes to him for the last two years. Of course they have their own groupchat together. Probably to talk about sex, booze, and weed. 

It’s unfair, he thinks, how the jerks always seem to be the popular ones.

“Motherfucker, I don’t think–” Horace is saying, but he breaks off when he sees Will. Something like a sheet of ice falls over his expression, and his voice is cool when he asks, “What is it, Treaty?”

“Just wondering if you could keep it down.” Will says, praying to every higher power Horace is on mute. “I’m on FaceTime for this project,”

“Fine,” Horace says, turning his attention back to his phone. “Close the door on your way out.”

Will blinks, surprised by the acquiescence, and hurriedly exits for the sanctuary of his own room. Another wave of laughter, slightly quieter this time, follows him out. Horace might’ve turned the volume down, but he’s still probably telling his buddies all about  _ poor pathetic Will Treaty, with nowhere to go _ . 

He still doesn’t know why Horace offered to let him crash here. The towel incident and everything that followed made it perfectly clear that Horace does not like him. In fact,  _ all _ of their interactions—ever since that first incident during freshman track—seem to indicate that Horace  _ hates  _ him. And Will has no idea why.

“Earth to Will,” he realizes Crowley is saying. “William Treaty, are you alive over there?”

Will sits back down and puts his earbuds back in. “Yeah—yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay, what did I just say?”

“I said I was here, not that I was listening.”

Crowley sighs. “They don’t pay me enough to deal with bastards like you,” he mutters. “Anyway, as I was  _ saying _ , we can at least finish this prototype to show our sponsors. I’ll hold off on deciding a launch date until then, as a compromise to Alyss.”

Alyss nods, obviously trying to suppress a smug smile. “Excellent,” she says. “When do we need to finish this prototype by, then?”

“End of next week, I believe. Is that doable for you two? I have to deal with a lot of housekeeping from moving courses online,” he says apologetically. “And you know how much I hate organizing things.”

“I can do that,” Alyss says hopefully, and Will coughs “teacher’s pet” into his fist. She shoots him a dirty look. 

“I’d rather have you coding.” Crowley takes another sip from the thermos. Given that it’s late afternoon, Will very much doubts that he’s drinking coffee. “Sorry, but no one gets to go through my files but me. Not sure anyone else knows how to deal with them but me, and sometimes even I can’t do it.”

“Only sometimes?” Will asks, and Crowley glares at him.

“Your grade depends on my organizational ability,” he says.

“Is that why he’s failing?” Alyss smiles innocently, and Will chokes on a laugh.

“You both are awful. Denizens of hell,” Crowley mutters. “I’m going to use my professorial authority to cut this meeting short before my pride takes a fatal blow.”

“Might be too late for that,” says Will.

Crowley studiously ignores him. “Goodbye, cruel students. Same time next week?”

“Looking forward to it,” Alyss says, and she hangs up.

“Same,” Will says. His screen goes dark and they leave him alone, just in time for him to hear Horace burst out laughing at whatever joke his friends have cracked now.

The brief period of civility between him and Horace does not last. In fact, the next morning, it gets a fuck ton worse. 

Will sighs as he adds his fifth heaping spoonful of honey to the mug. He can’t find the sugar and doesn’t want to search, and so has resorted to drinking coffee with honey. Surprisingly, it isn’t awful. 

The toaster oven chimes, and he grabs the toast, stomach growling, and slathers it in peanut butter and slices a banana to arrange on top. He’s so engrossed in making sure the slices are symmetrical—for the aesthetic, obviously—that he doesn’t see or hear Horace as he enters the kitchen. 

Until his concentration is interrupted when Horace says, “Treaty, would it kill you to get out of bed at a reasonable time?”

“This  _ is  _ a reasonable time,” Will says, still trying to arrange the banana. He’s too hungry to care what Horace thinks of him. “It’s—” he squints at the clock—“nearly eight-thirty.”

“Motherfucker,” Horace mutters under his breath. “When do you get up?”

“Six,” Will says through his first mouthful of toast, and his eyes close briefly. He imagines this is what Eve felt when she ate that apple, or however it went. He was raised by a Muslim mother and an atheist father, after all. “To run.”

Horace is watching him with an expression that Will can’t quite place. It’s not quite antagonistic, but there’s enough  _ Horace  _ in the look that he’s thrown headfirst into a memory of freshman year. No, not just  _ a  _ memory. _T_ _ he  _ memory—of their first track meet of the season. 

Will had just placed first in the 800 meter run. He was taking off his racing spikes when he heard Horace remark behind him, loudly, “Hell, y’all, I bet Treaty’s only that fast because he’s built like a toothpick. I mean, look at him.”

Several guys laughed, and Will’s face flamed red. He’d worked for years to make varsity in high school, to earn this track scholarship in college. How dare Horace say that—how  _ dare  _ he? “Shut the fuck up, Altman,” he snapped. 

“Ooh, scary.  _ Shut the fuck up _ ,” Horace mimicked in a higher pitch. “You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard him talk. This the first time you’ve ever talked, Treaty?” 

And Will’s temper shot through the roof. He’d won their team the first race of the meet, he was  _ fucking tired _ , and Horace Altman was pulling this shit with him?

In hindsight, the course of action he’d chosen was not the most logical one. But at the time, Will was too exhausted and angry to care, and he really wanted to hit something. 

That something turned out to be Horace’s extremely punchable face.

It took four guys to pry them apart afterwards. Will couldn’t see out of either eye, but he could just make out the spurt of blood streaming from Horace’s nose, and that made the bruised knuckles worth it.  Until he, and not Horace, was suspended from the next meet. Until the entire team sided with Horace instead of him, because Horace was—and still is—infinitely more popular that Will. 

And before he can stop himself, he says pointedly, “That’s why I’m on varsity. I worked my ass off for it, unlike–” He bites down on the word before he says something that’ll really burn the house down, but he finishes the thought in his head. Will worked his ass off for his varsity spot. Horace is a natural at throwing, a supernova to everyone else’s pale star, but he doesn’t even  _ try _ ; he shows up late to practice and jokes around during workouts. And that ticks Will off more than anything.

Horace narrows his eyes and says, “I didn’t fucking ask.” 

“I–” Will begins, but Horace interrupts him. 

“You know, for someone that’s living in my apartment, you could make an effort to be less unpleasant.”

And Will almost chokes on his banana toast. “I’d like you to tell me how,  _ how  _ on earth I’m the unpleasant one between the two of us,” he snaps. 

He thinks back on the last two seasons. The cold shoulders, the people that turn away every time he looks in their direction. The endless taunting that, bit by bit, has chipped away at his self-esteem. That has turned running, his refuge from the world, into something he hates. He’s filled with an anger so enormous he can’t possibly put it into words. “I can’t fucking believe you would ever say something like that.”

Horace crosses his arms, leaning against the doorway, his shoulders tense. He takes a deep breath through his nose, like he’s making an effort to rein in his own temper— _ Good _ , Will thinks savagely,  _ let him struggle for it _ —and says, “You want to know why I said it? You’ve literally been waking me up early every morning, dammit, and I came out here to ask you to be quieter, and you know who attacked first?  _ You _ , Treaty.” 

“You know what?” asks Will, and the rational part of his brain seems to have abandoned him. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind getting up at 8 if you weren’t out until midnight every day hanging out with people.”

Horace’s mouth opens slightly, as if he’s going to say something, but Will plows over him, thinking about his little sister and kids and families like her that will all suffer because of COVID-19. Because of people like  _ Horace. _ “There’s a pandemic happening, and you’re not fucking helping things,” he snaps.

“Again, I literally didn’t ask,” says Horace, and the heat in the look he shoots Will is almost heartstopping. “Treaty, here’s what I don’t get about you. Apart from that one argument over towels, I’ve been polite enough this entire time. So  _ why  _ are you so determined to be a jerk?” 

“Okay, asshole,” Will says, leaning forward and bracing his forearms on the table. “Speaking of being a jerk, I’ll shut up and be quieter when you admit what the fuck you did to me last season. Why  _ you _ started coming after  _ me _ and roped the rest of the team into it, too. You know what? Track was the only good thing I had in my life, and you took that away.”

He swallows, trying to find words that articulate the depth of the anger in him, the frustration that simmers at his very core, but he can’t. So instead Will looks Horace square in the eyes and spits, “I hope you’re fucking pleased with yourself.” 

Horace says nothing. Just stares at Will, his fists still bunched at his side, that fierce intensity alight in his eyes again.

And he turns around and goes back into his room, slamming the door behind him so hard the apartment shakes. 


	4. truce

Even over the shitty connection, he can see the concern in Halt’s dark eyes. “You know,” his former coach finally says, “this all could’ve been avoided if you’d called me and asked to stay.”

Will gapes. “You would’ve let me do that?”

“Sure, kid. What part of  _ you’re welcome to come by anytime  _ is so hard for you to understand? My husband dotes on you, for God’s sake.”

“I thought you meant to hang out, not to  _ live _ .”

“Well, now you know,” Halt says. “I see you haven’t stopped jumping to conclusions and avoiding clarifications.” 

“Great. Next time there’s a global pandemic, I’ll hit you up,” Will says, but the words come out sharper than he intended. He’s still stuck on Horace and their argument earlier. Every time he thinks about it, another burst of anger sears through him. “But we’re on lockdown now, so there’s not much I can do about it now, is there?” 

Halt leans forward so that he’s eye level with the camera. “Are you okay?” His gaze is piercing and inscrutable. As a freshman in high school, Will used to be scared of it. Until he realized that Halt was really just a huge softie on the inside.

He shrugs. “I could be more okay, but I’m sure that’s where we all are.”

“You have a point, kid. Work is a nightmare.”

Even after six years, Will still has no idea what the fuck Halt does for a career. His side gig is coaching boys’ track, sure, but the most he’s been able to weasel out is that Halt’s main job is related to the government. At this point, he knows better than to ask.

“I know,” he says instead. “College is a pain in the ass. Summit is going to be—oh, yeah,” he remembers. “Speaking of Summit, can you send me, like, all of my mileage charts from senior year?” 

Halt raises an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of charts.”

“I need to figure out a format to log mileage, so I might steal a leaf or two from your book.”

“As long as you shout me out when you become the next Steve Jobs,” says Halt.

“Bossy.”

“Fine, consider it done,” Halt says, and Will hears the sound of a reminder being set on his phone and then said phone being set facedown on the table. “But back to what we were talking about earlier, with Horace.” He puts a very light stress on the name, and from Halt, that conveys worlds of disdain on Will’s behalf. 

Will feels very validated, but there’s something else in Halt’s tone that he doesn’t like. “Yes?” He tries to keep the dread from his voice. 

“It might be better,” his coach says slowly, “if you sorted this thing out with him sooner or later. Hear me out,” he says as Will opens his mouth to protest. “You do not want to be stuck in a two-bedroom apartment with your arch-nemesis for the next who-fucking-knows how long. You don’t have to become best buddies. You just have to learn to not hate each other.” 

The events of the morning play themselves back through Will’s mind again, and he feels a fresh surge of anger. “That is  _ so  _ much easier said than done,” he says. “What are you going to do next, tell a freshman to anchor the 800 relay at state finals?”

Halt raises his eyes to heaven. “No respect,” he says. “Once they graduate, they think they know it all.” 

Will sticks out his tongue and blows an impressive raspberry.

“But I’m being serious,” Halt continues. “For your own damn sake, kid. Just make sure you don’t detest one another, okay?”

This is his coaching tone. The voice he uses at the starting line when the gun goes off on the heat directly before his. Will knows from experience that when the coaching tone appears, he’d better listen. 

“Fine,” he says heavily. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

That evening, Will’s putting groceries in the fridge when Horace enters the kitchen, and he nearly drops an entire carton of eggs. This is the first time they’ve been in the same room since this morning’s argument. Will forces down the immediate fight-or-flight response and puts them in the fridge before he does something stupid. Like throw them at Horace’s head, for instance.

“Hey,” he says, for civility’s sake, before he notices Horace is wearing a jacket and tennis shoes. 

Is he honestly thickheaded enough to go out right now? People like his little sister are dying because of idiotic college students like Horace Altman, and Will is a heartbeat away from calling him on it again. Only Halt’s advice stops him from blurting something out loud.

But nothing he could possibly say is going to be positive right now. With a barely contained sigh of disgust, he turns to leave.

“Wait up,” Horace says behind him. “Treaty—I just–”

Will pauses in the tiny hallway. “What?”

“I just wanted to apologize for earlier,” he says. “This morning. I said some shit I shouldn’t have said.”

_ Hell, y’all, I bet Treaty’s only that fast because he’s built like a toothpick _ , Will hears in Horace’s voice. He remembers freshman track season. A whole year of persistent taunting. Two black eyes. Horace’s miniscule apology doesn’t cover any of it. 

_ You don’t have to be friends _ , Halt says in his head.  _ You just have to learn to not hate each other.  _

And then Horace again:  _ So  _ why _ are you so determined to be a jerk? _

Okay. So maybe Horace did a bunch of shit to Will in the past, but Will’s still staying in Horace’s spare room free of charge. He can at least not be an asshole and accept the apology. 

“I—right,” he manages. His face is hot, either from anger or awkwardness, but he turns around. “I’m sorry too. For what I said this morning.” It’s an admirable effort, especially when he can’t stop thinking about his sister. About big brown eyes, a raspy voice after chemo, frizzy hair that he has to help her brush. About her favorite hijab, purple with a pink chevron pattern. Will feels like he’s betraying her somehow by being nice. 

“Okay,” Horace says. They’re both looking anywhere but the other person’s face. Will wants nothing more than to go back to his room and never talk to Horace ever again. “Well, I guess… Truce?” He swallows, finally managing to catch Will’s eye. He looks almost friendly, but Will can’t find it in himself to muster anything more than hostile neutrality. If that is a thing.

People like his little sister. Dying, because of idiots like Horace.

_ You don’t want to be stuck in an apartment with your arch-nemesis.  _

Damn this stupid virus. Damn it to the ninth circle of hell. 

“Alright—truce,” he finally forces out.

And before he can do something dumb like punch a hole in the wall, he whirls around and marches back into his room, wishing more than anything he could be at home right now and that this stupid virus wasn’t a thing.

The president’s voice grates after a while, Will thinks, as he drones on and on about how the nation is preparing for coronavirus. He’s taken to watching the daily pandemic updates—Will hates being left in the dark—but it’s the same depressing shit night after night. There’s a cutaway to a graph showing potential COVID-19 deaths. Numbers are projected to be as high as half a million Americans by the time this whole crisis is over.

He and Horace both swear under their breaths at the same time, and then look at one another, surprised. Inwardly, Will still curses Horace for going out all the time—he does wear a mask, but even so. They’re seated on opposite ends of Horace’s sofa, as far away from one another as they can get.

There’s a beat of awkward silence in the room as the Vice President takes the podium, and Will has to drag his gaze away from Horace as the VP starts talking. 

“I’d like to take a moment and recognize everything our American educators are doing to combat this virus,” he says. “Most of our universities have shut down—even the big public ones, our oldest institutions. As of this week, UC Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Ann Arbor–”

Will freezes, his heart pounding in his chest.  _ Please _ , he prays,  _ don’t say it. Please.  _ Do his parents watch the daily pandemic broadcasts? They must. His mom is always scarily caught up with the news. 

“–Clemson, Georgia Tech, Ohio State–”

“Shit!” Will swears aloud. “Shit, fuck, shit, fuck.” 

Horace gives him a weird look. “You good?”

“No, I–” Will fumbles for his phone, staring at the lock screen, praying his parents weren’t watching the news. The time changes from 6:13 to 6:14, and he swallows, his heart pounding like a kettle drum in his chest.

Then it suddenly starts buzzing in his hand, and his nerves are so frayed he almost yells aloud. “Fuck,” he swears again. “Oh my god.” It’s his mom.

Will picks up—what else is he supposed to do? Missing a FaceTime call from his mom is a cardinal sin. “Hey,” he says weakly. “What’s–”

“William Treaty,” his mother snaps. He gets his heavy brows from her; Nazira has her bright eyes. The combination of the two makes her look seriously intimidating. “How long has your school been shut down?”

“I—a couple weeks, now, but–”

She swears under her breath in Arabic. “Where are you living? Who are you living with? And how could you not tell us?”

Her eyes aren’t just bright, he realizes; they’re  _ over _ -bright. It’s hard to tell through the screen, but he thinks she’s close to tears. Nothing really prepares you for seeing one of your parents cry, he thinks. “I’m so sorry,” Will says, his stomach twisting. “I just—I just couldn’t, okay?”

“You should’ve let us know,” his mom says. Her voice is hard, but the note of betrayal in it rings loud and clear. How is it that Will tried so damn hard to stay in Ohio to keep from hurting his family, but his decision only ended up hurting them more? It’s like he can’t do anything right. Like he fucks up everything he cares about. 

“I—I wasn’t sure,” he manages, and his voice comes out as a croak. “Because of Nazira. I thought it was too risky.”

“Please don’t lie like that in the future, Will.” She adjusts her hijab, blinking several times. His mom is too proud to cry in front of anyone, least of all her children. Will got that from her too. “We’re always here for you. We could’ve figured something out.”

_ You would’ve insisted I come home anyway _ , he thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it out loud. Not to her, anyway. "I'm sorry," he says instead, and he is. He really is. His parents have enough on their plates with Nazira without having to worry about him too. 

There’s a beat of silence. Then his mom blinks one final time and asks, “Who are you living with? Your friend Alyss? Let me talk to her.”

“Well, no,” Will says awkwardly, clearing his throat. He suddenly realizes that Horace has been in the room with him for this entire conversation. “I’m staying with one of my teammates, actually. His name’s Horace—and he’s here right now,” he adds, before his mom can say something like  _ Isn’t Horace the boy who punched you?  _ “He let me have his spare room.”

Will sees this information sink in and prays that his mom won’t ask to talk to Horace. He doesn’t know what he’d do in that situation. Hire a hitman on himself, probably. 

Then she asks, “Can I speak to him?”, and he stifles a groan.

“Uh, hey, Horace,” he says, looking up from his phone. 

“Yeah?” Horace’s eyes are glued firmly to the TV, like he’s trying not to eavesdrop. Too late, it occurs to Will that the rational thing to do would’ve been to take the call in his room, but apparently quarantine has killed off all his braincells. 

“My mom wants to meet you.” He all but thrusts his phone at Horace, wondering if the safest course of action would be to hide out somewhere else for the duration of the conversation or not. 

“Oh—uh, hi. Hello,” Horace says, fumbling with the phone. “Um. I’m Horace.”

“It’s nice to meet you—I’m Will’s mother.” Another beat of silence. Will wants to bury his head in the armrest of the couch to escape the awkwardness of this conversation.

“It’s really nice to meet you too, uh, ma’am.” Horace is sitting ramrod straight, his grip viselike around the phone. With a start, Will realizes that he’s...  _ nervous _ to talk to his mom. 

“Horace,  _ habibi _ ,” his mother says, instantly sweet in a way she has never been and will absolutely never be with her own children. “I just wanted to thank you for letting Will stay in your apartment for so long.”

“It’s no problem. Really.” Horace self-consciously reaches up and attempts to work out a kink in his hair, pulling his fingers through it, but he only succeeds in making it worse. Will blinks. He’s never seen Horace this flustered before, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He can’t reconcile this Horace with the other one, the track throwing star that doesn’t care and doesn’t try.

“Still. It was really kind of you to offer, and we can’t thank you enough.”

“Ah—yeah. Yeah, anytime. Of course.” Will exhales, a tiny exasperated sigh. Horace is anything but glad to have him here, and they both know it.

“But you don’t have to put up with him any longer if it’s too much trouble,” she says, and his head snaps up.

“Mom–” he begins.

“It’s rude to interrupt, Will.”

“Sorry—I just—what? I’m not coming home: I won’t do that.” 

Horace shoots him a weird look, and that’s when Will realizes he’s never told him anything about Nazira. Or why he can’t go home at all. Shit, Horace probably thinks he’s a spoiled brat who doesn’t want to put up with his parents because of some late-stage remnants of Teenage Rebellion®. 

“I’m not saying you come home,” his mom says, her exasperation thinly veiled by patience, for Horace’s sake. “I’m saying your father and I will pay for a room in a motel or something, and you can live there.”

Will and Horace both freeze. Will’s pulse skips a beat. He could move out of Horace’s apartment—two whole weeks of Horace is definitely enough for him. He could be free of the loud FaceTimes, of tip-toeing out the door to run in the mornings. And yet…

Some part of him is hesitant to say anything, because it feels like he’d be throwing Horace’s hospitality—what little bit of it there is, anyway—back in his face. And the prospect of living alone out of a motel room is extremely unappealing to him. Will is definitely not ready to live on his own; he's a big enough mess as it is. But he braces himself, ready for Horace to kick him out of his apartment. It'll probably be better for them both in the long run, he tries to convince himself. 

But then, Horace says, “Oh—ma’am—I, uh… Will isn’t actually too much trouble,” and Will does a double take. _What?_ He glances at Horace, tries to figure out what the fuck he’s thinking, but Horace won’t meet his eyes.

“It just doesn’t make sense to pay hundreds of dollars when I have an extra room, y’know?” he says, more firmly this time. “It’s nothing. Really.”

Will discreetly pinches himself and wonders if he’s fallen into another dimension. Horace hates him—it’s a fact as immutable and eternal as the sun. Horace hates Will, and Will hates Horace, and that’s the story of their relationship. So  _ why _ is Horace voluntarily deciding to put up with him? 

He pinches himself again, and his brain reluctantly accepts that this is, in fact, the real world. The confusion churning in his stomach gives way to something that, oddly, feels like relief. Like the tempered hope that rose in him the night Horace drove him back to his dorm and offered his spare room. 

“Are you sure? Don’t feel any obligation to let him continue staying with you.”

“Thank you, ma’am. It’s fine. Seriously.” Horace is worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth now, something Will’s seen him do before track meets when the scores are close and it’s his turn to throw. It’s a nervous tic. 

“Well, if you’re sure.” His mom frowns. An awkward silence falls between them—she’s never been good at talking to people his age. Horace glances at Will and raises an eyebrow ever so slightly. Will takes it as a signal for him to intervene. 

He leans in over Horace’s shoulder, and some part of him is acutely aware that this is the closest they’ve ever been to one another, that Horace’s hair smells like sandalwood conditioner. “Horace has a Zoom meeting now, so he has to go, actually.”

Horace nods vigorously. “With, uh, my calc professor. I’m five minutes late already.”

“Oh! I’m sorry for keeping you,” his mom says. “But it’s nice to see that you’re so invested in school. Good for you.”

Will makes a mental note to ask Horace how to get his mom to treat  _ him  _ like that in the future. Unfortunately, he has a suspicion that the trick is to not be part of the immediate family. 

“It’s alright,” Horace says. “But I really gotta go now, so…”

“It was very nice meeting you, Horace,” says his mom, putting too much emphasis on the second syllable of his name. She smiles and waves. “Take care and stay healthy.”

Horace nods politely. “You too, ma’am.” 

“And Will—do what you can to help out, okay? It’s the least you can do. Love you,  _ habibi _ .”

“Love you too, Mom. Give hugs to Dad and Nazira for me,” he says, and hangs up.

Will lets his hand drop into his lap, holding his phone with limp fingers. This is something he's going to regret later. They had a chance to be free of one another, and neither of them took it. What has the world come to? 

Horace suddenly interrupts his train of thought by saying, “Your mom seems nice.” Will blinks—this is the first time he’s ever initiated a non-hostile conversation. “But why can’t you go home?”

“It’s a long story,” he says vaguely, not wanting to tell Horace about Nazira. “There’s a reason, I swear.”

Horace only nods, and the two of them lapse back into silence, to sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Outside, the sky is darkening from twilight to true night. The president is still droning on about COVID cases spiking across the country. And Will’s mind is spinning and spinning, thinking about Nazira. About his parents. About Horace Altman, and his hatred of Will—or lack thereof.


	5. Chapter 5

Pale morning light streams through the window, and Will hums to music from his earbuds—Movement by Hozier, currently—as he flips bacon in the frying pan. His mom hasn’t called again to drag him back to Idaho, so he’s considering that a victory too. 

Horace hasn’t gotten back from wherever he went out last night, and Will is wondering if he should be worried, because Horace usually gets back around midnight. He shakes off the thought: Horace probably spent the night at someone’s house and is hungover in their bathroom right now. He’s not complaining—it’s really nice to have the kitchen to himself. 

_ When you move, honey, I’m put in awe of something so flawed and free…  _

He cracks two eggs into the bacon grease with one hand, letting the whites sizzle up. Suddenly, over Hozier’s crooning vocals, he hears the telltale creak of the front door opening, and in stumbles Horace. 

One side of his hair is flattened like he fell asleep on it, and he looks unsteady on his feet as he pulls off his sneakers. As he enters the kitchen, Will can see purple shadows under his eyes, prominent against his dark skin. Where the fuck has Horace been? Where on earth does he have to go in the middle of a global pandemic? 

Will pulls out one earbud as the eggs spit and hiss in the pan. “You look awful,” he says by way of greeting, reaching for the chives and shredded cheddar on the countertop.

Clear across the room, he can hear Horace’s stomach grumble, and Will instantly feels bad as he loads up his plate.  _ Goddammit.  _ What is this, empathy? Horace probably shouldn’t have been out all night, doing God knows what.

“Two night shifts in a row will do that to you,” Horace mumbles, glancing at Will with eyes slightly out of focus. He is, very literally, swaying on his feet. 

Will’s fork freezes halfway to his mouth. “Wait, you work?” 

“Yeah. I’m a receptionist at the hospital in med school. Just—thought it’d be nice to help out there.”

“And then this pandemic turned up.” Will laughs, and the sound has a bitter edge to it. His brain is tumbling end over end, trying to match this Horace to the bully he’s always known. Fuck, he regrets thinking all that shit about Horace over the last few weeks. He’s  _ not _ irresponsible or careless—at least, not when it comes to COVID. “You’re not going to get sick, are you?” 

“We’re careful,” Horace says. His eyes keep straying to Will’s plate, and at this point, Will feels like not offering any food would be extremely shitty of him. 

He grabs another plate from the cabinet, pops another two slices of bread into the toaster. “Hey, you want some?”

Horace pauses, an odd expression on his features. They face off from opposite sides of the kitchen, Will still holding a plate in one hand and his fork in the other. Then, Horace’s stomach grumbles again, and he smiles slightly. “What the hell. It’d be rude to say nah.”

Will often surprises people with how much he can eat and still be skinny as a pencil. He’s learning right now that his appetite doesn’t hold a candle to Horace’s. It’s like watching a vacuum cleaner attack a platter of scrambled eggs. Four slices of bacon disappear in as many seconds. It’s kind of terrifying, if he’s honest. 

The bright side is that Horace is so busy eating that it saves Will from having to make any kind of small talk. This is the first time they’ve actually eaten together, despite living in the same place for the last month, and he has no idea what to say. Hell, he has no idea what to even  _ think  _ of Horace.  _ You’re a shithead, but not as much of a shithead as I previously thought?  _

But the silence—it’s like a living, breathing thing. It blankets every square inch of the room, hanging heavy in the air, setting Will on edge. He has to say something. Anything. He blurts out, “Your grocery bill each week must be killer,” as Horace finishes his second slice of toast. 

“Nah. Didn’t really shop for groceries before you moved in,” Horace says. It sounds casual, but Will swears his jaw stiffens, just the smallest degree. Fuck. Was that an offensive question to ask? Maybe food is a touchy topic for Horace or something.

His mouth shoots ahead of his brain, and he starts rambling. Anything is better than that awkward silence, honestly. “Oh—I mean, that’s chill. Uh, I’ve been getting some, and… I’m happy to grab things you need. Just write a list or something, I guess? Since I’m staying in your spare room, you know, it’s the least I can do.” 

Oh, Jesus Christ. This might honestly have been the most he’s ever said to Horace at once. Will feels his face flame again. He turns away and starts to stack his empty dishes in the sink. 

“Hey, thanks,” says Horace. “For real.” 

“Yeah. No problem. Uh… I’ve gotta go,” he says before he can blurt out something stupid again. “School project.” 

“Cool.” Horace doesn’t look up as Will all but runs out of the room, resolving to never make small talk with anyone ever again. 

It’s a resolution that lasts him approximately seven hours. He’s in the middle of a coding block later that day when Horace taps on his door. “Uh. Hey.”

“Hey,” Will says, his fingers still flying across the keyboard. This prototype has to be done in three days. It’s maybe halfway there, so Horace’d better have a good reason for interrupting him. “What is it?”

“Did you see Rodney’s last email?” Horace’s voice still makes something grate in Will’s chest, but he reasons most of it is a leftover fight-or-flight response. The last week has taught him a lot of things about Horace Altman. Will keeps thinking about the polite, flustered Horace that told his mom he was no trouble, the exhausted Horace gulping down bacon and eggs in the kitchen this morning. It’s just so incredibly  _ different _ from the image of frat-boy Horace Altman he’s had in his head for so long.

“No,” Will says, aggressively hitting the delete key several times. “What’d he say?”

“Uniform return is today at the R-PAC gym.” Horace leans against the doorframe. “Wondered if you wanted to walk over there with me.”

Why on earth does Horace want to go anywhere with him? He wonders if his brain is processing wrong. “What?” 

“Do you want to walk with me to the R-PAC to return uniforms?” Horace repeats. “I’m trying to save on gas so I don’t wanna drive.”

“Now?” Will asks, still frowning at his laptop screen. 

“Yeah, now is good. I gotta get back in time for a shift at 4.”

Will sighs and closes his laptop. “Dammit, Altman,” he says, grabbing his uniform.

“If you’re busy…” Horace shrugs. “I can just take yours.”

“No, I’ll come. You might need student ID for it.” Will steps into his sneakers, checking his pockets for his phone, wallet, and mask. “Let’s go.”

The day is bright and clear, the sky so blue that it makes his vision swim if he looks at it too long. The temperature is in that zone where it’s hot in full sun, but the shade still bites. Will realizes with a start that it’s April—how the hell is it already April? 2019 was yesterday. March was two days and two years long at the same time. Fuck 2020, honestly. 

It strikes him how rarely he’s stepped outside of the apartment in the last month except to go on runs. The world is starkly different, but somehow still the exact same. The streets are just a little emptier, is all. People step off the sidewalk when they see someone else coming, careful to keep up with social distancing, and the vast majority of them are wearing masks. 

It’s funny how a simple walk is so exciting to him now. Will’s almost forgotten how it feels to go somewhere, to have miniscule interactions with complete strangers. Maybe in two months, he won’t know how to do it altogether.

“What?” Horace asks, looking up from his phone, and he realizes he voiced that last thought aloud.

“Oh—just, it’s weird to be out,” Will says awkwardly. “And talking to people, in person.” Not that Horace would ever have that problem.

“I feel that,” he says anyway, probably out of politeness, and goes back to texting.

Will does a double-take as they arrive at the R-PAC fitness complex. He’s almost forgotten what it’s like to come here. It feels like coming back to a childhood home after moving out for a few years—simultaneously familiar and alien. 

He digs out his student ID to show the guy at the front desk, but he’s already recognized Horace and waves them both ahead. Horace grins at him, and the guy blushes and ducks his head.

Will shakes off a sudden twinge of annoyance—jealousy of Horace’s social skills, he reasons—and hurries after him towards the main gym. He takes a deep breath, steeling himself for social interaction with the track team, as Horace pushes open the door. 

“Ace!” someone yells as soon as they step inside. Horace daps him up, nods in just the right way. There’s an ease to his interactions with other people that Will can only dream of. They feel so fluid, so natural, so alive. 

He wishes he had his hoodie, but he shrinks into Horace’s shadow anyway. It’s easy—Horace is larger than life when he’s around the team, has his own gravity that draws people like the moon pulling the tides. Will is used to being ignored, or worse. It’s an unpleasant reminder of that one disastrous Zoom call at the beginning of all this, of what track practice used to be like before quarantine.

They approach Rodney’s table, set up in the middle of the room. Red and gray uniforms are laid along it in numerical order. “Treaty, Altman, good to see you,” Rodney says. His big mustache has been stuffed unceremoniously into a mask, and Will and Horace glance at each other and stifle a laugh.

What the shit, thinks Will. This is a day of firsts.

He hands over his uniform, smiling perfunctorily at one of Rodney’s jokes. And then he makes himself disappear, leaning against the far wall. His social battery has been utterly depleted, so he whiles away the time by watching Horace mingle with the rest of the team. How does he know what to say and when, which TikTok to reference, how to make other people laugh? Something ignites in the pit of his stomach as Horace grins at an inside joke, makes a promise to call another sophomore after his shift tonight. 

He’s done sooner than Will expects, at least. Another minute of that, and he’d have screamed his throat sore. “Ready to go?” Horace asks, holding open the door for him. 

“Yeah,” says Will, trying to project some energy into his voice. “Good to see everyone again, huh?”

“For sure,” Horace says. “You get to catch up with anyone?”

“Yep,” he lies, but it tastes like bitter limes in the back of his throat.

They step back out into the light, blinking. The sun is a brilliant white in the sky, a reminder that spring is here and will give way to summer in less than two months. Will falls back behind Horace and lets him lead the way back to the apartment.

Horace has earbuds in, his strides sure and even down the sidewalk. The way he moves is unfairly graceful, part of what makes him such a natural at discus and javelin. It’s like watching a study in motion. 

Will catches himself tracking it over and over again, realizes that Horace would kick ass as a distance runner if he ever tried. The fluidity of his interactions with other people seems to translate itself into the way he physically moves—the economy of every step he takes is amazing. That’s Horace, he thinks idly: brilliant, seemingly effortless in everything he does. 

He steps off the sidewalk, and suddenly a sixth sense goes off in the back of his brain. Will jerks his eyes away from Horace. Something is rumbling in the background—an engine gunning. And the sound is getting louder, Will realizes with growing horror, as the vehicle approaches the intersection. 

_ Shit _ , the intersection.

Where Horace, his eyes still on his phone, earbuds still blaring Tupac, is stepping out onto the crosswalk. 

It’s faster than conscious thought. Faster than Kipchoge’s record-breaking marathon last year. Fast as the unconscious nerve signals that shoot like lightning through his brain. Will lunges forward, zero to a hundred from a complete standstill. He just manages to grab onto the back of Horace’s shirt and pull him onto the sidewalk.

A split-second later, a drunk driver tears through the street, so close that Will feels the front of his hair ruffle. He coughs and retches from the exhaust, releasing his hold on Horace’s collar. 

Horace staggers a pace—the first clumsy movement he’s made all day—and catches himself on a telephone pole. He turns and looks at Will, his eyes wide with shock. “Fuck,” he says. “ _ Fuck _ .” His teeth are flecked scarlet. He must’ve bitten his lip— _ explosively _ —when Will yanked him back. 

“God, that was close,” Will says, hearing his heartbeat thundering in his ears. He sees the car skid past again in his head, and his mouth goes dry as he pictures what might’ve happened if Horace was still in the way. 

“You—did you just save my ass?” Horace asks. 

“Wasn’t about to let you walk to your death,” Will says. “But, damn, that was  _ close _ ,” he repeats. His system is thrumming with adrenaline, the ghost of his superhuman reaction lingering in his blood. 

He would’ve done the same for anyone, pulled them away from the rush of oncoming death, but he doesn’t forget the way his muscles moved like lightning. How the fuck did he manage that?

Horace turns, stares at the spot he’d just been standing. There are skid marks on the pavement from the car tires. “Well, I guess I owe you one,” he says, cracking a smile. “Big-time.” 

The afternoon break from coding was much-needed but not exactly helpful. Will can’t concentrate, because every time he tries, he hears tires screeching, sees Horace’s shell-shocked expression. 

Which is a problem, because Will really needs his brain to focus right now. There are two thousand one hundred and twenty-nine lines of code in this program. According to the system, one of them has a typo, but he keeps getting an error message that is the exact opposite of helpful. He feels like he’s slowly but surely frying his retinas to a crisp as he peruses the. Entire. Thing. Reaches the bottom, comes up with nothing, and scrolls back to the top to start again. 

“Found anything yet?” Alyss asks. He can hear the  _ click-clack  _ of her keyboard over the FaceTime, fingers drumming a tattoo in triple time. She’s got two Red Bulls in her system and a seven page paper for International Relations due at midnight. 

Why anyone would double major in computer software engineering and international relations is utterly beyond Will. But Alyss has been like this since they were freshmen in high school—she was co-founder of coding club, secretary of Student Council, captain of the lacrosse team. He just tags along and makes sure she doesn’t burn herself out. And she calls  _ him  _ the overachiever. 

“Nothing,” he mutters, blinking furiously. “What time is it?”

A pause in the  _ click-clack _ ing. Then Alyss swears under her breath and begins typing even faster. “Almost ten,” she says. 

Will takes another sip of coffee. When he closes his eyes, he can see little black lines of numbers and letters behind his eyelids. “I hate this class. I hate this major. I hate all of my life decisions that led up to this major.” This prototype is for their sponsors, but it also counts towards his final project grade. Double-whammy. 

“We have two hours and seven minutes until midnight.” Alyss stops typing for a second and cracks all of her knuckles at once. It sounds like popping Bubble Wrap.

“ _ Fuck.  _ This is really our fault, isn’t it,” Will mutters. “Next time—no more procrastinating. None. Hold me to that.”

“There won’t be a next time. I’ll be dead from a massive caffeine overdose by morning.”

“Babe, please tell me you’re not about to pull another all-nighter,” he hears on Alyss’s end. That would be Cassandra, her ever-loving girlfriend. “I’ll smother you with a pillow if it means your sleep schedule doesn’t fuck itself up again.”

“Well, our sponsors need this app prototype by Friday. And I have to turn in this essay at midnight, so.”

“You have two more days on the prototype, love. Take it easy,” Cass says, winding her fingers through Alyss’s hair.

“Oh, believe me,” Alyss groans. “We are going to need both of those days.” She stops typing long enough to put her own hand on top of her girlfriend’s. A small smile spreads across Will’s face at the sight of them, happy together even in the face of perilous midnight deadlines. 

Sometimes he wishes he had something like that, but he’s never had a girlfriend, and the way his life is looking right now, will probably not have one for a while. Still, it would be nice to… what? Be unabashedly affectionate with someone. Be able to say in the face of the world,  _ Yes, we belong together _ . 

He tells his romantic side to shut the fuck up and goes back to parsing the code line by line. Counting all the parentheses. Making sure the semicolons go where they’re supposed to, and nowhere else.

His mind wanders, and he looks over the same line of code five times before he shakes his head and tells himself to move on. It’s the worst kind of tedium, boredom overlaid by heart-stopping stress and the kind of exhaustion only all-nighters can give you.

There’s a knock at his door. Will mutes himself before muttering, “What, Altman?” He turns to see Horace standing in his doorway in plaid PJ bottoms and a white T-shirt. Onscreen, Cass wolf-whistles, and Alyss laughs. Will hurriedly puts his phone facedown on the table. 

There’s a beat of awkward silence before Horace says, “This a bad time or something?” 

“Hell to the fuck yeah.”

“Oh. Oh, sorry. I just wanted to ask if you wanted to watch Brooklyn-99. Saw it on your Hulu the other day.”

Will glances at the time again. Feels his stress levels pick up another notch. Reaches for his coffee mug and realizes it’s empty. “Horace. There could literally not be a worse time. I’m busy.”

Some emotion flickers across Horace’s face too quick for him to catch. Will thinks it’s almost like...  _ hurt _ , but his mind can’t seem to reconcile the Horace Altman he knows— _ thought  _ he knew—with that emotion.

And then it’s gone, replaced with his usual easygoing expression. Will can’t help but be reminded of a window shuttering closed. “Alright. Sorry for bothering you.”

Horace shuts the door with a gentle  _ click _ , leaving Will alone with his empty coffee mug and their Friday deadline ticking ever closer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (happy belated birthday to tupac; THUG LIFE is still so extremely relevant today)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: mention of character death, grief  
> love y'all x sorry this chapter was late

He finds the typo twenty-six minutes later: an indentation mistake between blocks, because Python syntax is really  _ that bitch.  _

“Imagine including white space in your syntax,” Will mutters.

“It’s more organized,” Alyss retorts. She’s chugging a third Red Bull—the amount of caffeine she puts into her system is frightening. “And Crowley likes it too,” she says like this seals the whole debate.

“You’re a teacher’s pet, you know that?”

“Very original.” She crushes the can and tosses it at the trashcan. And misses. “Dang.” Somehow, Alyss never swears. It’s bewildering—Will can’t remember the last time he made it through a day without saying  _ fuck _ . Especially now.

Alyss gets up to put it in the trash, and even onscreen Will can see her fingers drumming: caffeine jitters. “What else do we have to do tonight?” he asks. 

“Have you finished all the graphics?”

“Everything but workout log pages.” Will the example logs from high school Halt sent him. He hasn’t gotten around to remaking them in Photoshop yet.

“Okay, so do that, and then upload the program.”

“So that just leaves coding the transition pages tomorrow,” Will says slowly. Before Summit, he never realized how much code went into an app. Every prototype they send their sponsors—partner corporations who have agreed to donate fifty cents to Leukemia Lives for every mile logged in the app—covers a different aspect of it. This one features all the main user functions, graphics included. They still have to make a settings page, their login screen (and a server that hosts the Summit accounts), and a like/comment function for workout posts.

“Yep. I hate those,” Alyss says. She’s gone back to typing up her paper. Will opens the files Halt sent and studies how the table is set up, trying to translate that to an app format. He’d kill to be a graphic design major right now. 

In Photoshop, he starts playing with the colors, the width, the margins. Thirty minutes later, he’s got a working design—it’s clean and it doesn’t crash. That’s all he has the time to care about right now. As a last step, he checks his notes almost perfunctorily, and then realizes he’s left off the whole column that tracks total weekly mileage. “Fuck,” he says, burying his head in his hands.

“What?” Alyss asks. She’s checking the clock religiously—ten minutes to midnight.

“Just a mess-up.” Will waves it off, trying not to bother her. Fuck it—ir’ll be easier if he starts over from scratch. He saves the draft and opens up a new file with a sigh. It’s going to be a long night. 

Alyss submits her paper seven minutes late and starts coding the transitions that’ll take users from page to page. Gratitude sparks in his chest: she knows how much Will hates those code blocks.

His eyelids droop from time to time, split-seconds of dozing in his chair, and Will has to pinch himself to stay awake. By the time he’s finalized all the tables, the clock reads 2:36AM and his brain feels like it’s being pressure cooked.

“I’m gonna sleep now,” he says through a yawn.

Alyss cackles, her voice full of caffeine-induced high and very-early morning delirium. “I’d try, but I’m wide awake.”

“No shit.” Will gestures at the Red Bull still in her hand.

“I  _ will  _ smother you,” Cassandra says offscreen. “Try me, I dare you.”

“Have fun with that.” Will stifles another yawn and ends the call. He barely remembers tripping into bed, socks still on his feet. His eyes slam shut before he even touches the pillow. 

Before his brain even fully wakes the next morning, Will’s subconscious registers that something is wrong. The room is full of gray shadow, harbingers of the coming sun. He groans and sits up, fumbling in the half-darkness for his phone. 

It’s buzzing against his desk like a demented horsefly.  _ Alyss.  _

Squinting, he checks the time—5:10AM. This is urgent. Dread clears the last wisps of sleep from his mind as he accepts the FaceTime call.

“Will,” Alyss gasps out as soon as he picks up. “Will.” 

“What happened?” Will feels his pulse quicken. He squints at his phone, groaning as his eyes adjust to the brightness. “What is it?”

There’s a tiny pause, a split-second where he registers several things about Alyss: shaking hands clutching a box of tissues, eyes red and purple from crying and lack of sleep. “Crowley,” she says. “It’s Crowley.”

A cold hand clutches at his heart. “What… about him?” Will turns the phone away from him so he doesn’t have to see the screen, so Alyss can say the news to a blank wall. Maybe that’s easier. Because even before he knows, he knows.

“Heart attack,” he hears. Her voice flakes at the edges, ends of words creaking away to nothing. “Around nine last night, they think.”

“Is he–”

“No. No, he didn’t make it.”

It’s like white noise fills his brain. Will remembers dimly reading that static is a remainder of the beginnings of the universe, and maybe that makes sense, because right now all he wants to do is go back to the Big Bang and reassemble all the atoms that made Crowley’s life.

“You’re shitting me,” he hears himself say. “You’re shitting—you’re–”

“I’m not shitting you.”—the first time Alyss has sworn as long as Will’s known her. That’s when a little more of it sinks in, his brain grasping at the fraying edges of the truth. 

“How did he–”

“Cass says he was on a run.” Will’s half-functioning brain pieces together jagged facts like broken glass: Cassandra’s dad is a professor at OSU, he probably got the news first, that’s why Alyss is calling him at 5am.

“No.” He buries his head in his hands, like that’ll make the truth go away. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,  _ no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no:  _ a litany. 

“I’m sorry,” Alyss breathes, and then Will curls in on himself, clutching his phone to his chest like that’ll bring her closer, like that’ll bring Crowley back, like quarantine and COVID haven’t wrenched them farther from him in innumerable ways. Because that’s all he has for comfort in this grief—a hunk of metal and glass, six square inches. 

On the other side, Alyss does the same. They hold one another, and at the same time they don't. It’s an atom-thin lifeline, all that’s keeping Will from stumbling into this chasm of grief that yawns inside him, deep, dark, and bottomless.

The next hour is a blurry streak in his mind, raindrops on car windows. He and Alyss write an email to their sponsors, drafted in a shared Google Doc they just worked on three hours ago when their lives were drastically different. How everything could change so much, so fast?

_ The Summit team is saddened to announce the news that Professor Crowley Meratyn passed away on April 26. Meratyn was integral to the conception of Summit and to the ideals that live within it, and his loss has shaken us all. Further news on the fate of Summit will be forthcoming.  _

It feels fucking wrong to write about Crowley like this, a generic obituary to appease the corporations that only care about profit. He deserves so much more. Will’s fingers shake over the keys, and over the FaceTime he can hear Alyss’s doing the same. The steady  _ click-clack  _ from last night is stilted now, hesitant like a slowing heartbeat.

Hitting send feels impossible. Because sending out this email will make the news official. Irrevocable. Soon, the entire world will know that it has lost Crowley Meratyn, and this email is going to be a part of the reason.

“Will,” Alyss says softly. “I can do it–”

“No.” Will remembers the way she was going to organize Crowley’s files. The way Crowley was a mentor to both of them, but at least Will has Halt back home; Alyss’s relationship with her parents has always been stilted. He won’t make her the one to share this. He won’t do that to her.

He closes his eyes and clicks the button, and it feels like pulling the trigger on a gun. “Oh my god. Oh, my god.”

“I know. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry.”

Will doesn’t know why she’s apologizing, or what she’s apologizing for. But maybe taking the blame makes her feel better than knowing that there  _ is no blame _ , that this death is just one among senseless thousands in the pandemic. 

“Stay with me?” he asks. 

No hesitation. “Of course.” 

It falls silent but for the sound of his own heartbeat, an occasional rustle from his phone as Alyss shifts. A stifled sob or two, the sound of them both choking on their own grief.

An eternity later, his phone goes silent in his lap. Dead, Will thinks, and then flinches at the fucking irony of it. 

Two hours pass, or it could be two minutes. Will sits on the floor, knees pulled against his chest. The room is lightening from half-black to gray to dark white. All he can think about is that this is the first sunrise the world has seen without Crowley. Soon it will be the first noon, the first dusk, the first rain, the first full day. 

Then—“Treaty,” he hears Horace say.

It’s not in him to choke out a response. So he doesn’t, eyes still fixed on the carpet, silent and unmoving. 

“Treaty,” Horace repeats again, and the door opens, nudging Will’s shin. “What–” He breaks off as he sees Will’s form huddled against the wall. Will doesn’t look up as he opens the door wider. Then there’s a  _ click  _ as Horace shuts it again, and he slides down the wall to sit next to Will.

Will can feel his body heat, sleep-warm and oddly comforting. He still doesn’t move, doesn’t know if his muscles will respond if his brain tells them to do something. 

“How long?” Horace asks. His voice seems unnaturally loud. 

“What?” The words barely make it onto Will’s tongue, trapped in the dryness of his throat. 

“How long have you been sitting here?” Horace nods towards Will’s phone, the screen dark in his lap. Will lifts one shoulder in a shrug, and Horace takes it as a signal to keep talking. “Maybe… think about getting up, man.”

“No,” he tries to say, but it comes out a bone-dry whisper. What will movement do to him? To move is to acknowledge that the world will continue without Crowley. To move is to have to deal with the aching hollow inside him, to know that one day the hollow will be filled and no longer ache. He doesn’t know which one is worse: pain, or the forgetting of it.

“You need water, Treaty.” Horace gets to his feet. His footsteps get quieter and then louder—going and to and back from the kitchen—and then he’s holding a mug out to Will. Will ignores the offered drink, settling his chin deeper between his knees.

Horace sets the cup on the carpet and sits on the floor opposite him. “I’m not leaving until you drink that.”

_ Fine _ , Will thinks. He won’t move first. Horace has other shit to do than sit on the floor and watch him grapple grief. 

They’re facing one another now, a kind of silent stare-off. Will’s eyes trace the ground, along carpet fibers curling like wool. He’s acutely aware that Horace’s are on  _ him _ . It is intensely vulnerable, being studied in this utter silence unto death, but still he refuses to move.

He’s there and then he isn’t, mind wandering and catching on memories like sticky honey. The first time he saw Crowley as a scared freshman wandering into the lecture hall. Seeing his professor in a denim jacket with a pride flag pin sitting cross-legged on the desk and thinking,  _ Huh—so this is college.  _

Turning up at Crowley’s office—a poster of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera dominated one wall—and begging to help with this new app concept. He still wonders what Crowley saw in him, perhaps hunger or determination or both, but that was the day Will got a chance to atone for the shit he did in high school. It isn’t enough—it might never be enough, but it was a start. Crowley gave him that start. 

It strikes him that he’ll never get a chance to pay Crowley back, and that Crowley will never get to see Summit finished, never come to Will’s graduation like he said he would, never explain computer science to Nazira over FaceTime again. 

His vision filled with stinging tears, and Will feels salt crust the edge of his eyes.  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry _ , until the words lose meaning and a cold numbness descends on him.

And still Horace sits, watching him with the same quiet intensity. Will begins to think this is a match he won’t win. 

Gradually, the numbness in the back of his mouth grows sharper, his tongue drying to sandpaper. He feels thirst sink its jaws into his throat.  _ Goddammit. _

He unclenches his hands, unwraps his arms, un-hunches his shoulders. Slowly, a rusty engine remembering movement, Will leans forward and takes the mug. He thinks that maybe Horace will rub it in with an  _ I told you so _ , but instead all he says is, “Drink all of it.”

He does. Horace has to uncurl his fingers from the handle when he’s done. “That wasn’t so bad,” he says, and his voice is almost kind. 

Will’s mind catches on those words:  _ that wasn’t so bad _ . Crowley said that to him as a freshman after almost every exam, every project.  _ See, that wasn’t so bad _ , he’d go, taking Will’s paper with a wink.  _ Promise not to fail you.  _

_ Except _ , Will thinks, _ you did _ . He’s gone now, and Will is more alone than he’s ever been. Crowley left him and Alyss alone to somehow go on without him—to finish Summit or abandon it altogether. Both options seem equally impossible. 

“I’m going to take you on a run now,” Horace announces, jolting Will out of his own brain.

“What?” he asks.

“A run,” Horace repeats, looking down at him. “The thing you do where you move your legs and it hurts like hell.”

“Why–”

“You need it.” Horace glances at him, raising his eyebrows. They’re neat, even sculpted—the fuck, does he shape his brows? 

“I’m leaving now,” Horace says loudly before turning and heading for the front door. Will stares at his retreating back for a split second and then swears under his breath, reaching for his running shoes.

The pavement is too bright when he steps outside, sun glaring off pale cement. His watch chimes, saying it’s connected to GPS, so he forces his legs into motion. It feels clumsy, his gait uneven, like he’s forgotten how to do this most basic of things. 

Horace matches him step for step, and Will thinks idly that his earlier observation was correct: he  _ would  _ make a brilliant distance runner. He has the form for it, fluid and free. 

It takes a mile and a half for him to break the silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Will doesn’t, not at all, but he figures Horace deserves a little context. “My professor—he died.” 

Horace sucks in a breath, or that could just be him struggling for air. “I’m sorry.”

Funny how two words lose meaning so quickly, but it’s somehow different from Horace. More sincere, somehow. Maybe it’s because Will’s never heard sympathy from him before. 

“It’s alright. It doesn’t feel—as it should,” he finds himself saying. “No hurt, just… shock.”

“I get that. But…” Horace breaks off for a moment, trying to get enough oxygen. “... you just have to keep moving. That’s something you learn after a while.”

Will wonders what taught Horace that lesson—was it too many late nights at the hospital, too many COVID deaths, or was it something else? Something more personal?

“Otherwise? You freeze. You feel like you can’t do anything—” another gasp—“and it becomes true: you can’t, because you let it get to you. And we can’t have that, not on top of all the bullshit this year is pulling.” 

The side of his mouth tilts upwards, and Will looks at him, surprised. Again: Horace is not who he thinks he was. Every day gives him a new insight, and Will isn’t sure how to put these pieces together. “Thanks,” he says.

“Yeah. Y’all were close, weren’t you?” Horace’s breathing is labored, but Will gets the feeling he’s talking to fill the silence, trying to help him move forward from this initial grief. Gratitude spreads in his chest for the last person he expected to feel it for: Horace Altman. 

“Yeah. We… had a big project going on. An app, actually.” He thinks back to the mass email they sent out this morning.  _ The Summit team is saddened to announce the news that Professor Crowley Meratyn passed away…  _ What will this mean for LeukemiaLives? Nazira? How much closer will he be to letting everyone down? 

“Damn. I’m sorry,” Horace says. “Are y’all going to keep working on it?”

“I don’t know,” Will murmurs. “I just… I don’t know.”

“I think you should.” The firmness in Horace’s tone shocks him into looking over. Sweat is beading on his face despite the brisk morning, but with what looks like an immense effort, he keeps talking. “If it meant a lot to him… I think y’all should keep at it. It’s a way of remembering him, right?—so get it done because of tragedy, not in spite of it.” He breaks off at the end of the sentence, as if embarrassed.

Will blinks, unable to formulate a response in time.  _ Get it done because of tragedy, not in spite of it.  _ Horace cut right to the center of it, to the crystal truth in one sentence. He has this way of talking, Will realizes, that makes everything seem clear-cut. Like it’ll all turn out okay. 

He ends the run long before he usually would, because he can tell Horace is struggling. He remembers Horace on Zoom saying,  _ I wouldn’t do distance running if you paid me _ , and thinks sometimes, even seemingly small actions of support take huge sacrifices from people. This is one of them.

“I will… never… complain about a field workout again,” Horace gasps out, his hands on his knees. “Y’all do this… every day? For fun?”

“It’s longer and faster than this, usually,” Will says. He doesn’t smile exactly, but it lightens some of the emotion weighing his chest down. 

“The fuck.” Horace shakes his head. “You know what, I gotta respect that.” He straightens up and grins at Will, and Will is reminded of the night they looked one another in the eye and struck a forced truce. But this time, it feels more genuine. It feels real. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for racism and homophobia

Will collapses back on the floor of his room after he and Horace get back. He has so much shit to do today—they have to finish the prototype, after all—but he can’t find it in himself to even open his laptop. He can’t do this without Crowley. He just can’t. Life is hurtling past him on train tracks at sixty miles an hour, and Will is too hollowed-out to do anything except stare off into space. He feels worse and worse with each idle second that ticks by, and it gets harder and harder to move, or think, or  _ exist _ . Vicious cycle.

He gets a text from Alyss:  _ The funeral is on Sunday.  _

Shit—what day of the week is it? Is it Friday? Will is fairly certain it’s Friday.

_ ok _ , he sends back. The typing bubble comes up, and Alyss says,

_ I finished the rest of the transition pages and sent the prototype file. _

“The fuck?” Will says aloud. His fingers move frantically:  _ you djdnt have to do that?? oh my god im so sorry _ . He should’ve expected it, should’ve been there to help. Alyss deals with stress by working harder. It’s in her blood.

_ coping mechanism :)  _ she sends back, and Will lets his phone drop with a sigh.

“Yo, Treaty, are you good?” he hears Horace say from his room.

“Fine,” Will says back, but a moment later he hears Horace get up and leave his room.

He pokes his head through the door and raises his eyebrows as he sees Will on the floor. “This doesn’t look like fine.”

“Fuck off,” Will retorts, but there’s no venom to it. He’s actually glad— _ glad _ —to see Horace for the first time since they’d met, track season drama be damned. Anything is better than being alone. Sure, Will has Alyss, but having to resort to texting and calling makes him feel more deserted than ever.

“Nah,” Horace says. He glances at his phone, snapping off a text before looking back up at Will. “You gotta get up, Treaty. You can’t freeze, remember?”

“Fuck off,” Will mumbles again.  _ Let _ him freeze. He wants the ice to creep over him, encase his insides, still his heart. Being frozen means that whatever emotion burning through his chest right now—apathy or sadness or anger or all three—will finally go numb. 

Horace shakes his head. “Listen—I see a lot of grief, okay? It consumes people, eats away at them. Especially during these last few weeks. And I’m sorry, but I  _ refuse _ —” his voice drops, and he squats down to look Will in the eye—“I refuse to let that happen to you.”

In the last few weeks, Will’s seen Horace be friendly, caring, awkward. Layers on layers he didn’t know existed. This side of him is deeper than any he’s seen, edged with desperation like rust on a blade. Something in his chest twists, but still he keeps quiet.

Horace straightens up, and when he speaks again the desperation is gone. “Okay. You like to cook, don’t you?”

Will wonders what Horace is thinking right now. “I mean, I guess.” 

“You’re not giving me a lot to work with here.” Horace considers him for a moment before coming to a decision. “Fine, you know what? The fridge is empty—I’m dragging you grocery shopping.”

What the fuck? _Grocery shopping with_ _Horace_ is not on the list of things Will thought he’d ever do during his life. It’s somewhere up there with “riding a flying pig to Mars” and “becoming a business major”. But before he knows it, his mouth runs ahead of his brain, and he says, “Sure.”

“Dope. Let me, uh, change real quick,” says Horace, and then Will realizes he’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt and boxers. He feels his face flame, but then thankfully Horace says “Be right back,” and leaves the room.

Five minutes later, Will is staring down at the dashboard of Horace’s Honda. The last time he rode in a car was over a month ago, the night Horace picked him up after the party. He can’t even begin to articulate what’s happened to him since then. Will wants to go back in time. He wants to knock his past self on the head and tell him to appreciate every second of every minute of every hour of every day he’d had before COVID had hit. Before Crowley had died.

“How’ve you been holding up?” Horace takes his eyes off the road to glance at Will. “Wait—that’s a stupid question. It’s gotta feel shitty.”

“Yeah,” Will says. A strange relief washes over him at the clarity of that statement. No beating around the bush, no  _ my condolences for your loss.  _ Just:  _ It’s gotta feel shitty.  _ Horace only nods and changes the station from NPR, and “Battle Scars” by Lupe Fiasco comes on. 

A couple minutes later, Horace pulls into the Walmart parking lot. “I know Whole Foods is way closer, but I felt like giving patronage to a different rich-ass billionaire today,” he says.

Will blinks, taken by surprise. Horace’s type—frat boy, all muscle between the ears—is not the type that usually frequents the  _ Eat the rich  _ parts of the Internet. Then again, Horace’s type is not at all what he thought it was.

“Can’t believe we have to choose between the Koch brothers or Jeff Bezos,” he says.

“Everywhere else is closed,” Horace mutters, pulling his mask over his nose and mouth.

“A global pandemic will do that.” Will takes a sanitation wipe as he enters the store. A feeling of déja-vu washes over him, like the time he walked into the R-PAC gym. “Do we want a cart?”

“Fuck yeah, we want a cart.” Horace wipes down the handlebars and basket. “Is it even grocery shopping if you don’t speed down the aisles in one of these?”

His face breaks into a smile despite everything. He can’t believe going to Walmart, of all places, has made him feel better. “You’re right.”

Will is the one that stocks the fridge, so it’s fucking hilarious watching Horace try to pick fresh produce. He goes down the aisle, knocking on every watermelon, and ends up choosing none of them. “It’s just something I’ve seen my dad do,” he says defensively when he catches Will staring at him.

“You want one that sounds hollow when you hit it.” Will demonstrates, smacking the nearest fruit. “Like that.”

“I knew that,” Horace says, picking up the watermelon. “Definitely. I was just going down the row to check the rest of them.”

“Uh huh. Remind me to teach you how to cook sometime,” Will says. 

“Then we’ll both be homeless, because I’ll burn the apartment down.” Horace drops a bunch of ripe bananas into the cart.

Will picks them up again. “You don’t want these—they’re going to be brown and gross in a few days.”

“They’re only good when they’re speckled,” says Horace, and Will does a double take.

“ _ What  _ did you just say?”

“Green bananas taste like shit.”

“Brown bananas look  _ and  _ taste like shit.” He grabs a bunch of unripe bananas from the stand. “These are where it’s at.”

Horace shakes his head. “I can’t even begin to articulate how wrong you are.”

“The reason you can’t articulate anything is because I’m  _ right _ .”

“No, you aren’t–”

“Yes, I am, dammit.” Will puts his green bananas into the cart. “Fine—we’ll get them both. I don’t think there’s purchase limits on these, right?”

“There’s only limits on meat and eggs,” Horace says. “But keep your nasty-ass bananas away from my bananas.”

Will rolls his eyes to heaven and pushes the cart away from the fruit section. He pulls up a note with recipe ideas on his phone, and they go down the list: cilantro for guac, kidney beans for chili, potatoes because they’re a staple. And even though his face is hot under his mask and there’s masking tape on the ground for social distancing, it’s the most normal Will’s felt in a long time.

They grab eggs and milk, and he learns that Horace is one of those lactose-intolerant idiots that insists on eating cheese anyway. They can’t really afford fresh meat, but Will grabs two packages of turkey bacon. He hasn’t forgotten Horace’s appetite after night shifts.

“Alright, I think this should be good for the next two weeks,” he says. “We still have a whole case of Ramen in case I don’t feel like cooking.” 

“I tried to make Ramen once. I forgot to add the noodles and let the water boil for half an hour,” says Horace, and Will buries his head in his hands. 

They’re turning the corner to stand in line for checkout when he realizes he forgot something. “Be right back,” he says, and before Horace can say anything he slips away to the dessert aisle. 

The box is on the top shelf, bane of short people everywhere. Will sighs and jumps to reach it, knocking the box off with his right hand and catching it in his left. He bumps into someone as he lands, and the jolt sends pain flaring through his shins. “Shit—sorry, I’m so sorry,” he babbles out. 

“Watch it,” the guy mutters.

“Sorry, sorry,” Will repeats, backing away. The other guy isn’t wearing a mask, and the last thing he needs is to catch COVID. 

“Where do you think you’re goin’, shorty?”  _ Fuck.  _ There’s two more guys standing at the end of the aisle, dressed nearly the same as the first—white sneakers, red baseball caps, college-age or slightly older. 

Will keeps his eyes down and turns again to slip away down the other end of the aisle. The dude he bumped into moves to follow him, egged on by his friends. Why the fuck are they picking on him?

“Careful, Alda, he’s Asian. He might have the coronavirus,” one of the other two says loudly. 

The words ring in Will’s ears. So it’s not because he’s short, it’s because he’s  _ brown _ . He isn’t remotely Chinese, but racists don’t care about that. Fuck this shit. Will feels his blood start to boil, but he continues to walk away, quickening his pace.

The dude named Alda grabs his shoulder, and he nearly jumps out of his own skin. “Why so scared, Kung-Flu?” His idiot friends cackle at the joke, as if it isn’t unoriginal and utterly racist to boot.

The  _ irony _ of these guys accusing him of spreading COVID, when he’s wearing a mask and they aren’t, activates Will’s fight-or-flight response. Except somehow, it’s both at once. His heart thunders in his ears, and he wants to yell that he’s from fucking  _ Idaho _ , but at the same time he wants to be anywhere else. 

He sees a Walmart employee at the end of the aisle and makes a beeline for him, but the employee glances over and then away, leaving for a different part of the store. Will swallows, trying to keep his breathing even. He can’t panic, not here, not now—and he doesn’t want to know what these three will do if he starts  _ crying _ , heaven forbid. 

“Corona got your tongue?” jeers one of Alda’s friends, and he’s reminded of a pack of wolves circling a cornered deer. “Why don’t you just go back to where you came from, ch–”

“That slur you’re going to say—I’d advise against it.” Will’s knees go weak with relief. Horace is leaning against their shopping cart at the end of the aisle, casually popping his knuckles one by one. “Because then I’d have to beat your ass.” 

“Aw, who’s this?” Alda looks from Will to Horace and back again. “Your knight in shining armor?” he taunts, and he’s far too close to Will, who can smell weed on his breath and flinches away. “That’s so  _ gay _ –”

It’s as if Horace’s calm expression cracks in two, revealing an anger that’s murderous, acute,  _ painful _ . Before any of them can blink, he swings and punches Alda in the face. 

Horace is a thrower, his body trained to channel all its power behind one arm. His fist collides with Alda’s jaw with the same force that can hurl a sixteen-pound iron shot sixty feet. The impact knocks Alda away from Will, and he’s out before he hits the ground. 

Horace swears and shakes out his knuckles, turning to Will. “Are you–”

Then Alda’s two friends are on him, literally  _ on  _ him, yelling obscenities and slurs that make Will’s brain bleed. The three of them go down in a tangle of flailing limbs, the sound echoing off the ceiling and shelves. Will stands transfixed: he’s been in fights before, but none this vicious or brutal. What does he do, what does he do—what  _ can _ he do–

Horace gasps in pain, and that shakes him out of it. Will lunges forward and tries to pull one of them away by the shoulders. Someone’s arm glances off his ear, and he cries out, more in shock than anything. The guy cusses at him and lashes out, and Will instinctively drives the heel of his hand forward into his nose.

_Fuck_ , it hurts more than he expected it to, but the _crunch_ is something he really didn’t anticipate. Will flinches back as he feels cartilage crumple inwards and blood spurt against his palm. 

A new voice says, “Break it up or I’ll call the po—Horace, what the  _ hell _ ?” 

Will, Horace, and the two guys spin around to see a manager striding down the aisle towards them. The employee he saw earlier is trailing behind her. She sounds familiar—why does she sound familiar? 

“Didn’t know you worked at Walmart, Cass,” Horace says, breathing hard, and Will’s adrenaline-fired brain finally recognizes the manager as Alyss’s girlfriend. 

“Wait, how do you guys know each other?” he asks. 

“High school,” Horace says, and Will blinks. He knows that Cassandra moved to Ohio during freshman year—he just never considered that she went to the same high school as Horace afterwards.

“I  _ do  _ work here, unfortunately,” Cassandra sighs. “And thank you all for making my job so much harder than it has to be.” She looks around at all of them, her eyes finally landing on Alda, still lying on the ground.

“Sorry,” Horace mutters. One of his eyes is swelling up, and Will feels a stab of guilt. He should’ve acted sooner. He shouldn’t have come to this aisle in the first place.

“No, it’s not your fault.” Cassandra shoots Alda’s friends a dirty look. “But I have to kick you all off premises now. I’m sorry,” she adds, addressing Horace. “You get how this looks, though: you knocked a guy out, and the security footage shows you started it.”

One of the other guys opens his mouth to argue, but Cass shuts him up with a glare. “Buy whatever you came here to buy, and get the fuck out. My shift ends in half an hour. I’m too tired to deal with racist bullshit.”

Will’s starting to see why Alyss likes Cassandra. He knows they used to date in middle school before they fell out and Cassandra moved halfway across the country, but he’s glad they’re back together. They complement one another in a way he sees but can’t quite articulate.

Horace nods at her. “Let’s get outta here.” He turns back to their cart, and after a second Will follows him, guilt gnawing away inside. He pays and loads the groceries into Horace’s car in silence. There’s nothing to say to Horace’s blackened eye, to his split lip swelling purple—he got that jumping to Will’s defense.

They’re on the road before Horace speaks. “Assholes,” he says. “I can barely see.”

“I can drive,” Will volunteers, even though he hasn’t done it since high school. “It’s the least I can do–”

“No. This was the least  _ I  _ could do.” Horace’s mouth is drawn in a tight line, and Will thinks back to that first punch, to the sudden anger that preceded it. That wasn’t  _ all _ because of the racist remarks. It had been an old rage, something running deep. 

Alda’s taunt, he remembers.  _ That’s so gay _ . 

“Are you–” he blurts before cutting himself off. “Wait—sorry, never mind—it’s not my business.”

There’s pause, thick and heavy. “Am I gay,” Horace says finally. He flicks off the radio, cutting the music off mid-beat.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Will says. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“Nah, it’s not a secret. I was with a guy in high school. For like, six months of senior year.”

“Oh—cool,” Will says. He’s chill with it, of course he is: Alyss has been out for four years now, and Crowley is— _ was _ —aroace. Something about Horace being into dudes, though, sets him on edge, his mind racing a little faster. He pushes back against it, not wanting Horace to regret telling him. He’s determined to be an ally, and this doesn’t change anything. “Does… the team know?”

Horace shrugs. “They might, they might not. I’m not out there with it.” Another pause. “Cause… I could tell my parents didn’t like it. They didn’t say anything,” he adds, “or try to change it, so I guess I’m lucky. But I could tell they wanted a son that was straight.” Will barely hears the last phrase over the hum of the engine.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Nah—like I said, it could’ve been so much worse.” Horace turns his attention back to the road, and all Will can think about is that word:  _ lucky.  _ Like he’s lucky to have parents only disappointed in him instead of kicking him to the curb. Like he has to be lucky to not become another statistic, a disowned kid. Like just existing in this world without physical harm as a gay person is  _ lucky. _

“How’s your eye?” he asks, just to keep the silence from being too awkward, as Horace parks. 

“It’ll be a bitch for a few days, and then it’ll go away,” Horace opens the trunk, grabbing half the grocery bags. “You know.”

“Yeah.” Will’s had a black eye before—two, in fact, both from Horace. He shakes off the memory of that meet, letting it sink to the back of his mind where it belongs. This is not the time to dredge it up. Not when Horace just took on three guys for him. 

_ But…  _ a little voice in the back of his mind says. 

Will silences it. “Thanks again,” he says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Horace nods, and even with the black eye, his expression is sincere. “Like I said, I owed you. And I always pay back what I owe.”


End file.
